Working in a  school makes me more aware of things to watch in my son. We have speech therapists that work for the school board. One day I asked one of the therapists about when (my 16 month old at the time) would stop saying “A-wound and a-wound and a-wound” and start saying around. I know that Rs are tough for kids. My own brother had a few rounds of speech therapy for his Rs.

She confirmed that Rs are in fact a hard letter for kids to pronounce. Then we got chatting about milestones for babies. And then it happened.

She let me know that by the age of 2, that toddlers are supposed to have 200 words.

200! Yes, that final zero is intended.

Up until a few years ago, the milestone was 50 words at the age of 2. So of course in my mad panic to confirm that my child would reach (or better yet surpass) this goal, I sat down with my husband that night and we started the list of words that we knew our son was saying.

And we were at 21. Just 21! YIKES! We both flew into crazy parent mode, and sat down to determine the path that we would take to reach the milestone of 200 words.

We read every day to him. We have all of the fun books that help kids to identify images with simple words. We are the people that get the NIP screenings and meet the milestones month ahead (when possible)….so we are not sure how we are so behind with this word business.